The iPhone and the iPad both have a switch on the side of the device by the volume buttons that is capable of being used as a mute switch. The iPod touch, on the other hand, has nothing but volume buttons, which requires you to manually set the volume down to silent and then manually bump it back up to an audible volume. As this can be a pain, jailbreaking comes into focus to fix the problem.

Available for free in Cydia today is a new jailbreak tweak dubbed TapVolumeToMute by iOS developer CoolStar. As the name implies, you are going to be using the touch screen and not any type of hardware switch to get the same kind of reaction you would expect from a mute switch. The tweak is very easy to use – simply bring up the volume's heads up display (HUD) by pressing either of the volume buttons and then tap on the heads up display to mute the device.

You will know when the device is muted, because tapping on the heads up display will remove all the volume indicator dots at the bottom of the heads up display to make it look the same way as it would when your volume is all the way down. To un-mute the iPod touch, you just need to press either volume button to bring up the heads up display again, tap on the heads up display once more, and your volume will return to its original setting before muting it.

The muting function is good to have on the iPod touch because applications with push notifications and sounds enabled will continue to make noise when you get notifications until the iPod touch has its volume lowered down to the bare minimum. For some, this is a tedious fix and having a way to mute the device temporarily and quickly in a similar fashion to the iPhone is a necessity that Apple never gave us.

It's interesting how such a small mod can be so great for the operating system and we can recommend this tweak to all iPod touch owners. If you're using an iPhone or iPad, you should just stick with using the mute switch. TapVolumeToMute has no options to configure and you can start using it immediately after installation. Be sure to give it a try and let us know what you think about it.